Page:Earl Canning.djvu/109

Rh the Sepoys actually broke out, plundered the town and treasury, and made off for the jungles.

Such was the general position, with which, within the first few months of the Mutiny, Lord Canning was confronted. It was impossible to define the area of probable disturbance or to gauge its intensity. It was impossible to conjecture where next the flames would break out, how far the conflagration might extend. In Upper India it already glowed fiercely. All Bengal might, at any moment, be in a blaze. The great necessity of the moment was, first, to keep open the main lines of communication which led from Calcutta and Bombay to the scene of action; secondly, to prevent, — and, if prevention were impossible, to delay — explosions in Bengal which there were for the present no means of suppressing; thirdly, to prevent the struggle from becoming what the temper of the English was threatening to make it, a war of races.

For several months the position became increasingly critical. The British army before Delhi, despite all that Lawrence could do to reinforce it with Punjab levies, was enormously outnumbered, and daily fights were thinning its ranks. The idea of seizing Delhi by a coup de main had been abandoned. Many doubted whether, even by regular siege operations, its reduction was possible; for the besieging force could attack it only on one side, and behind its walls were all the resources of the insurrection and a constant inflow of recruits.

In July the rescue of the Cawnpur garrison had